Google’s AR Stickers now Available for Pixel Phones

One of the most exciting features Google introduced with the Pixel 2 phones back in October was something called “AR Stickers”. “AR Stickers”, in case you missed it, is essentially a mode that lives inside the native camera app’s hamburger menu along with others such as Portrait and Panorama. Enabling this will let you superimpose a bunch of Augmented Reality objects in your surroundings and capture pictures or selfies with them. Although you can only employ the rear camera right now.

Once selected, you can just drag and drag the available 3D objects to the scene and play around however you like. In addition to that, you can resize and position them relative to another person. To kick things off, Google has provided a couple (five to be precise) of interesting sticker packs such as characters from Stranger Things, Star Wars, food items like an exhausted coffee-to-go, and a few more. There’s also a text sticker that allows you write anything in AR.

Most of these virtual characters are interactive and come with their own voice as well. Therefore, you can even film videos with them. Moreover, as Google demonstrated at the October 4th event, they react to each other too. For instance, kids from the Stranger Things TV series will be scared if you place a “Demogorgon” near them. I did try AR Stickers for a brief period and found them fun to use and accurate for the most part. It requires you to orient your phone everytime the app detects a new surface. But once configured, AR Stickers seem to be functioning flawlessly indicating a positive start for ARCore itself.

“AR Stickers” is now gradually rolling out to all the Pixel phones including the first-generation. You’ll need to update two applications for this — ARCore and AR Stickers, both of which should be available in the “My Apps and Games” section of the Play Store. Direct links for both of them are mentioned down below.

Shubham Agarwal Author Shubham started as an intern with Technology Personalized and later graduated to be a full-time author. He dabs with both features and news posts. Currently based out of Bangalore, Shubham holds an engineering degree in Computer Science, while specializing in mobile applications.